REPRESENTATION Making simple line drawings out of basic conceptual inputs.

To consider "Everything," the new installation by artist Astrid Bowlby, consider what we know about the sausage maker.

But first, let's back up a bit — a few generations' worth — to the introduction of the engineering concept of the black box. Presently defined by Wikipedia as a "device, system, or object which can be viewed solely in terms of its input, output, and transfer characteristics without any knowledge of its internal workings," the black box was a useful way for industrialists to conceal the nasty, brutish, or confusing process by which something gets made.

Today, there are all sorts of black boxes — computers, credit analysis reports, Uzbeki sweatshops — but one of the most robust early examples was the sausage maker. In you place the mysterious miscellaneous offal, and presto, out comes a perfectly packaged sausage link.

The concept is useful in thinking about "Everything" — and Bowlby's work in particular — because though it may be the most uniquely labor-intensive show I've ever seen in Portland, it completely turns the black box on its head.

Bowlby, a distinguished artist and sculptor known mainly for her ink works of abstract and impenetrably dense black fields, is devoting the next six weeks to the task of producing a countless number of representational drawings within the USM gallery. Working in-residence from a small studio in the vestibule, she draws the images plainly, in black ink on large unfurled spools of white cotton paper, which she affixes in animated patterns throughout the gallery.

Not yet one week in, she has easily drawn over a thousand discrete images, all by hand. Objects, animals, artifacts — she applies them to paper in no discernible order. Not a hint of narrative; aesthetic detail bare minimum. Besides medium, and the fact that there are no second takes, their only criterion seems to be that they be representational. Indeed, anything that has a name, Bowlby will draw it. She has taped handwritten lists of hundreds of things (supplied by her students) to the walls of the studio, and placed a bowl for visitors' suggestions in the hall (I submitted Russian tortoise, parade float, and record stylus . . . fingers crossed!).

This is particularly significant for those familiar with Bowlby's past body of work, where, often, canvases or cut-paper accumulations of crawling, disarticulate lines would become collected into densely unified masses of blackness. They weren't violent; they were cold, machinic, and inscrutable, and their final form always seemed to amount to more than the sum of their parts. In other words, they both conceptually functioned and appeared to the eye like a black box. In "Everything," by stark, liberating contrast, the entire process is visible all the way through the production chain, making the radical, often impossible step of rendering the artistic process both noncommercial and completely transparent.

More than black and white In “Drawing,” the spare, residential Icon gallery offers the work of 13 Maine artists on intimate display.

Odd year ahead for museums and galleries Remember, for every droopy tarp stalactite that makes it into a museum lobby installation, there are dozens of similar (and similarly impressive) creatures that never leave a studio wall.

Review: Wilfred It's hard to say what's more surprising about Wilfred , FX's new comedy — adapted from an Australian series — about a depressed ex-lawyer (Elijah Wood) and his friend Wilfred, who he thinks is a man in a dog suit but who is, in actuality, a dog. Is it that the show exists at all, or that it's actually pretty good?

Voodoo economics To paraphrase The Communist Manifesto , a specter is haunting Hollywood. Actually, two of them: zombies and vampires. The undead.

Preaching to the hive What’s the most effective way to make people care about the institutional problems with our industrial food economy?

Ronnie James Dio (1942 - 2010) As he lay in a Texas hospital bed in March, being treated for the disease to which he would eventually succumb, Ronald James Padavona, better known to the world as heavy-metal legend Ronnie James Dio, gave an interview to a local TV station. “Cancer? I’ll kick the hell out of you,” he declared, before throwing the devil horns.

Beer on a budget The beer industry is generally considered recession-proof, since people are still going to drink beer when times get tough. But has the same been true for more expensive craft beer in the recent recession?

Boston tucks away a $125 million windfall As debate continues over the city’s finances — and whether the city of Boston can afford firefighters’ raises, branch libraries, community-center staffing, and other costs in tight times — the city is planning to quietly tuck away a one-time windfall of more than $125 million.

Where the wind blows Thank you for the first nonpartisan, fact-based article I have read regarding the Cape Cod wind-farm project.

UNMASKING AFRICAN RELICS | February 26, 2014 An evocative, transportive exhibit of icons, artifacts, and spirit masks from some of the many, many cultures and “kingdoms” of West Africa, what is now Cameroon and Nigeria.

THE TEQUILA ODYSSEY | February 20, 2014 Each of the city’s drinking establishments has its roots in some primordial myth.

TRUE EFFIN' ARTISTRY | February 20, 2014 Mousa is the new recording alias of Vince Nez, a/k/a Aleric Nez, the name by which he released a nimble, unpredictable record in late 2010.

THE STATE OF SEA SALT | February 12, 2014 A surfeit of salt manufacturers have cropped up in the state over the last few years.

NOT YOUR AUNTIE'S DOOM | February 06, 2014 Sure, it may be Latin for “forest of trees,” but Sylvia more readily conjures some wiseacre aunt, not a burly group of veteran musicians trying to carve new notches in well-trod forms of heavy metal.